Friday, December 31, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: Potatoes that are firm when being peeled. We just opened a new bag of Ilam Hardy potatoes and they are great. The Agria potatoes that we had before tasted pretty good but if left them too long, they went a bit soft and peeling them was difficult.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: Easy, long summer days :) I love living in the Southern hemisphere where our holidays coincide with the festive season. Not having to put up with the cold and snow that has been plaguing those in the North is an added bonus.

Today's Gratitude Item: The book I'm currently reading is surprisingly good! After the disappointment that was Patricia Cornwell's The Last Precinct, its refreshing to read something that is gripping, fast paced and intriguing. The book in question is The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind. This one is a fantasy novel so its not for everyone - but so far I'm really enjoying it.

Today's Gratitude Item: This cool online Latex editor which lets one create beautiful Mathematical formulae / documents and then export them as .pdf files. It takes a bit of practice to get the hang of it but its much faster than trying to get various equation editors to cooperate.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: That my client's website (which was broken) is now fixed. Even better, I've found an alternate e-commerce solution which may well be suitable. Said system is free for stores with less than 15 products and luckily said client has 12 products. So its all good.

Today's Gratitude Item:Cute pdf writer. This is a nifty little app which lets one create .pdf files easily by basically printing a document as a .pdf. It really helped today as I wanted to change diagrams made in Geogebra into vectors. Turns out the easiest way to do this is to "print" said diagram as a .pdf and then open it in Illustrator for editing. Trust me when I say its easy when you know how.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: Its been raining. Normally I would not be all that thrilled about wet weather but when it brings drought relief to much of the country, then its a good thing - long may it continue.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: That the school where I used to work finally fixed the mistake with my pay. Back in October when I went to dance camp they docked a full day's pay instead of a single period (which was all I missed). Needless to say it was something of a mission to get this sorted. Happily it has ended well.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: That I don't celebrate Christmas. A dentist friend of mine told me that every year their business spikes because people become so stressed that they grind their teeth and need professional help. I never realised it was that bad!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: Deciding not to go to dance camp in Melbourne next year. The logistics were unworkable and I was getting far too stressed over it. Happily, some of the dancers from my dance group will be going over there and they have agreed to get me a copy of the music / teaching DVD's. Whilst this is not as good as "being there", its a pretty good alternative.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: School's Out!!! Do I really need to say more? Had a great day today where we basically went in to eat. Started with breakfast and then had morning tea with farewell speeches, followed by an amazing lunch. Saying goodbye to colleagues was a bit tough but I'm excited that I have a new school to go to next year. In the meantime, let the vacation begin.

Thursday, December 09, 2010

Today was the last day at my "old" school (the new job starts in February after the vacation). Below is my first ever youtube video which was created because farewell speeches are not my thing. Even my colleagues not featured in the video seemed to enjoy it.

The wallpapers featured in the video will appear on this blog in due course.

Today's Gratitude Item: Finding out that many of my 7th graders were sad that I was leaving. Apparently I managed to make a positive impact on them - which is sort of the point of being a teacher. That and getting really good quality chocolates when I was officially fare welled in assembly this morning (no speech required).

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: Help wrapping "prizes" for my students. Tomorrow is the last day of school and the plan is to bribe them to complete a particular worksheet. The deal is as follows - play math games on laptop (no prize) or complete worksheet (one prize for each side). We will "settle up" at the end of the period so students only get to see what exactly the prize is after they have done the work. I would not have been able to wrap the prizes without help as it was a time consuming exercise and time is one thing in short supply right now.

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Today's Gratitude Item: Getting a free case for my sun glasses after managing to lose the original case that I've had for years. Said case was a lovely soft drawstring bag that held my glasses and could be used to clean them too. The replacement is identical to the one I lost (only cleaner). The optician was fantastic and just gave me a new case on the spot. Very cool.

Today's Gratitude Item: Finally figuring out that it is possible to drag .mp3 files from iTunes onto one's desktop and then use them. Sometimes trying to figure out where music files are hidden in the iTunes folder can be an exercise in futility so being able to make a copy of specific songs quickly is very useful.

Today's Gratitude Item: A really good day doing Community Service (ie: track maintenance). This involved shoveling gravel into sacks and the sending said sacks up a track and laying the gravel. All done by 9th grade students and their teachers in a beautiful reserve where its too hard to get machinery in. The kids had fun and so did we. After working in the morning, we had an awesome lunch, the kids got to go swimming in the ocean / play sports and we had a bit of a break. All in all a great day.